The Ministry of Environment’s Environmental Management Administration hosted the 2024 International Technical Exchange on Emerging Contaminants and Remedial Practice June 27-28 in the southern city of Tainan and online, underscoring the government’s commitment to tackling pollution.
Seven experts from Australia and the U.S. were invited to speak, and over 200 academic, governmental and industrial representatives from home and abroad participated in the event, the MOENV said. Taiwan is dedicated to investigating soil and groundwater pollution and related remediation techniques, the ministry said, adding that the country’s focus on cutting-edge technologies puts it at the forefront of the field in Asia.
Joining the symposium’s opening ceremony via videoconference, MOENV Minister Peng Chi-ming said that protecting soil and groundwater quality is the basis for maintaining both human and ecosystem health, and is critical to fulfilling multiple U.N. sustainable development goals. Finding new, more effective ways to deal with new pollutants is therefore a challenge of the utmost importance, he added.
Jane Nishida, assistant administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs who attended the conference virtually, said that the Taiwan-U.S. cooperation on environmental protection dated back to the 1990s. She emphasized that polluted soil and underground water pose a particularly severe threat to children, senior citizens and underprivileged groups, and said she hoped that the seminar would lead to fruitful professional exchanges that would ensure robust environmental protection.
As a major actor in environmental protection in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwan will continue to collaborate with other countries to research sustainable remediation techniques and preventative measures to jointly safeguard people and resources of the region, the MOENV vowed. (POC-E)
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